I need to ask you all something

Martie

Moderator
Hi everyone,

Last year when I did "The Parenting Experience Survey," several of you suggested that I do a retrospective study of late adolescents and young adults. I have not forgotten this idea--and did a good deal of reading on the methodological problems of retrospectives. Then two students wanted to do the Due Process study first--and I got them a small grant.....the Due Process study isn't going well for lack of response but I keep hoping --and we are exploring other avenues to try to reach 5-7 more people (if you know anyone who has been to Due Process--send them on over please). This is a qualitative study (by telephone interview) so only ar9ound ten people are needed for it to be creditable.

As you can see, research goes VERY slowly. Everything takes twice or three times as long. Soooooo...I'm wondering if you all would REALLY support a retrospective study? There were 23 people who had gone to Due Process--we have 3 and one more scheduled. That is less than a 25% subsample-and 6 short of the minimum we need.

If I were to try to do a retrospective, it would not work unless PE and Teens & SA responded at lot higher rate. In the original study, there were about 106 respondent with difficult children over 17. I would need about a 60 60 70% response rate for this to work because retrospectives are quantitative not qualitative. Here's why:

The purpose of a retrospective is to try to figure out (after the fact) what worked and what did not. This type of study is very difficult to pull of with parents of EBD kids because by the time the kids are as old as ours, the parents are --who knows where? Further, as you know if you read the summary of the findings of the first study, parents of EBD children are viewed as a big part of the problem in the literature rather than a big part of the solution as parents here are.

So CD.com parents are a unique source of information because as a group they have done SO MANY THINGS to try to help, there is a good chance that we could figure out, on average, what helped and what didn't.

If I were to do the retrospective, it would be another on-line survey (much shorter than the first one) that would ask for more detailed information about what services you obtained, in school and outside, to try to help your child. Again, it would be totally anonymous and no identifying information would be sought. The only qualification would be having a difficult child over 17 (or maybe 16 if out of school) whose "outcome" and age are known at the present time. That qualifies every parent here.

I really hope this could work--there are no retrospective of EBD adults who are spread out all the way along the "success" and "residual problems" continuum as is the case with our kids. It is worth doing in my opinion--but I love research but know it is not everyone's passion.

So how about it? Do enough of you still want to do it? It is a TON of work to get permission from the institutional review board (IRB) to conduct a study and lot more to write the survey. Since the Due Process study is floundering, I told the research team I would post to you guys to try to see how you feel so we can decide where to direct our efforts.

Thanks for reading this.

Martie

 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
You can count me in as a yes. I have nothing but time on my hands to fill out papers. I can also see if I can find some folks who had kids Corys age that were in the programs with him locally.
 

Suz

(the future) MRS. GERE
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I would need about a 60 60 70% response rate </div></div>

What does this mean, Martie?

I'm happy to help. I'm not sure we have 60 (if that's what the 60 means) PE/SA sets of parents, tho. Maybe some lurkers participated and would do so again?

Suz
 

hearthope

New Member
Martie you can count me in.

I would be happy to share my attempts of saving my son, as long as I read it correctly that what I tried didn't have to be successful.
 

Fran

Former desparate mom
I'll do anything I can to help the cause of research and those like you who slog your way through all the bureaucracy. Let me know when and where.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
Martie

I never went thru Due Process, so couldn't help you there.

But I'd be happy to help with this one. I think it's an excellent idea.
 

judi

Active Member
Martie - Not only would I be glad to help, I live in IL (central) and can provide insight into the resources in the Peoria area.
 

Martie

Moderator
Suz,

60 60 means I cannot type. I was trying to say I need 60 to 70% of the original 106 for this to be feasible statistically.

Trust me, through Fran's help, we got over 100 respondents to the original survey with difficult child's over 17.

The deal is that if I go ahead and do this, I will need all of you to "gently" twist arms to get people who do not show up daily to fill it out. It will not take very long (maybe 20 minutes.) The problem is, I do not want to launch another study with one in trouble. I have no idea why we are having problems with the Due Process study--we needed about 10 out of 23 prospects. Doesn't seem risky but now we are stuck. Fortunately, it is LESS important that Due Process people come the CD.com although I would like the parents to have EBD kids. In fact, I'll take anyone who has been to Due Process. So if you know anyone, have them e-mail me at [email protected] and they will be contacted so fast it will make their heads spin.

The reason I want to do the retrospective study is I want to know--out of all the things everyone tried to do, (in broad categories), what worked for the greatest number of difficult children. I know everyone is an individual, but if one can get the numbers up to 60 or so (100 would be much better) then individual differences begin to wash out and patterns (if present) emerge. This cannot be done with 25 or 30 people.

The reason, as I tried to explain above, that this group of parents is unique is that SO MANY THINGS WERE TRIED. Think of it this way: if nothing is tried, then nothing will work. Therefore, conducting this study with a very pro-active group of parents makes sense. The conclusion would be slightly biased towards active intervention, but I can live with that. One cannot really research "doing nothing," which is how parents of EBD kids are portrayed in the literature--oh yes, that and in need of parent training dispensed by your typical 25 year old school staff member.

So if everyone who responded here so far could round up 8 to 10 of your nearest and dearest from this site by pm, then there would be enough people to make the study creditable. HOWEVER, you can't all e-mail the same people--LOL--each one only counts once.

Think about whether or not this is realistic. It should be--in 30 days, there were over 100 responses in the over 17 age range to a MUCH longer survey. However, I never discount that Fran was on every couple of days on every board telling people to donate 30-40 minutes for the good of our kids. Fran is persuasive... :smile:

This time, it would mainly be the people here who would have to encourage participation.

Martie
 

rejectedmom

New Member
Hi martie I can do the retrospective survey. i am sorry the Due process ne is in trouble. I never went to Due process so I could not help with that study. -RM
 

KFld

New Member
Sorry it took me so long to respond to this and I hope I'm not too late, but I would definatley be willing to participate. Just let me know what I need to do.
 

Penta

New Member
I read every day and I would be happy to participate in this survey.

Let me know when the survey is online.

Thanks.
 
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